Save Just $25 With Ad-Supported Kindle

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Save Just $25 With Ad-Supported Kindle

Amazon will sell you an ad-supported Kindle for $114

Can't afford a Kindle? Amazon will knock $25 off the price of the Wi-Fi model if you can stomach compulsory ads.

The new "Kindle with Special Offers" costs $114. In exchange for the price cut, Amazon will replace screensavers with ads, and put banners on the home page. The ads will not show up when you're reading a book.

The initial run of screensaver ads will be sponsored by Buick, Procter & Gamble, Visa, and Chase, and Amazon will also drop its own special offers into the mix. From the examples, Amazon's offers look pretty good. As for the third-party ads, they will be presented to the public for review before being used as screensavers. This will be done via an upcoming app called AdMash, which will show prospective ads to users and allow them to vote on which ones will make it to the front page.

It's a curious move, and devilishly clever. It puts static ads onto the screens of potentially millions of Kindle's when they're not in use, where they can be seen by any passerby. Even the AdMash app is really a way of showing more ads to those who use it to vote. Amazon, along with its partners, is clearly getting its money's worth.

And what of the buyers? It's a curious group of consumers that wants a Kindle enough to pay $114, but can't spring for $25 more to remove the ads. How are they going to buy books? And is it really worth turning your ebook reader into a mobile billboard for the price of a dinner? After all, the ads will haunt you for the life of the device. And if you are trying to save money, then its likely you'll be hanging on to it for a long while.

There's another downside, too. One of the greatest things about the Kindle is that you can read any old junk and nobody will know. All they see is the standard screensaver, when you're really reading the collected works of Danielle Steel. Now all kinds of embarrassing spam could show up there. Still, I guess anything's better than that godawful Emily Dickinson screensaver.